Apparently you can get something for nothing: Free PhotoBooks from HotPrints

HotPrints has just announced that they will be offering free ad-supported photobooks made from your social network photos.  Their photobooks were already priced at $2.99 a book (much lower than most other services), so it looks as if they have well established themselves as the cheapest way to get photobooks online.

Making personalized photobooks has become increasingly popular over the last few years and printing companies are constantly trying to find new ways to get customers interested in turning their photos into these products. With most companies, you can now customize your cover, choose from high-quality papers, and create cool themed pages from their templates. However, one trend I did not expect to see is the price going down...especially going down to nothing. Making books (and photographic products in general) is not cheap once you factor materials, labor, and shipping, so it is interesting to see a model where these costs are not being passed on to the customer.

Here's the rundown of the HotPrints deal:

• Everyone gets one free book per month (free shipping too)
• Program is ad-supported with removable ad inserts
• Each book consists of 16 printed pages on glossy stock paper
• You can make your photobook with your Facebook or Bebo photos

I have not created a HotPrints book (or seen one) so I can't really comment on the ordering experience or the quality of the product. However, my inclination is that most people who are creating these from their candid Facebook photos will not care too much about pristine quality. And at the low price of "free", I don't think too many people will be complaining.

For me, the really fun thing to watch is if this ad-supported model for user-generated content can be successfully transferred over into physical products. This model has had varying success on digital content sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc., so it will interesting to see if it is possible to sustain when there is an even higher cost (or at least different cost) to the end product.

I don't see them converting any pro photographers over to their service, but it will be interesting to see if this increases an interest in photobooks among consumers and if other services start to feel compelled to offer free physical products to compete.